Kyrgyz Foreign Ministry criticizes U.S. Human Rights Report
BISHKEK. April 16 (Interfax) - The U.S. Department of State's 2015 Human Rights Report's section regarding Kyrgyzstan is incorrect and is an attempt to put pressure on Kyrgyzstan's political system, the Kyrgyz Foreign Ministry said on Saturday.
"Kyrgyzstan considers certain judgments from the report to be incorrect, openly biased, and politically motivated," the ministry said in a statement shared with Interfax.
"We see the conclusions concerning arbitrary arrests and isolation of politically dissenting individuals in the authorities' interests as absolutely biased and unsubstantiated," the ministry said.
"The observations alleging impunity for officials, the violation of the rights of the notorious Azimjon Askarov [a human rights activist convicted for fomenting interethnic enmity and mass unrest], and harassment of nongovernmental organizations also look absolutely absurd," it said.
"Such documents have been dictated by geopolitical considerations, in this particular case those of the U.S. Department of State," the Kyrgyz Foreign Ministry said, noting that "this is clearly seen from the analysis of relevant materials concerning Kyrgyzstan in different years."
"It is quite understandable that the report authors rely on judgments and information provided to them by the NGOs financed from the U.S. and by private individuals, who often seek to make civil society accept viewpoints on these or those problems that are inconsistent with our people's traditions and do not meet the republic's national interests," it said.
Bishkek believes it would be reasonable if such reports provided comparative analysis of human rights observance in the U.S., the ministry said.
"We see the aforementioned report by the U.S. Department of State with regard to Kyrgyzstan as a politically motivated, unsubstantiated, and inappropriate attempt to put pressure on the political system existing in the country and as political blackmail," it said.
The U.S. Department of State had published the 2015 Human Rights Report earlier this week, which says, inter alia, that Kyrgyzstan infringed upon the rights and freedoms of ethnic and sexual minorities and applied torture and political reprisals to its citizens.
